City round-up: C4x Discovery Holdings; K3 Capital; Byotrol
C4X Discovery Holdings, the Manchester drugs discovery group, said it has seen a “tremendous year of progress” when it announced its annual results for the year to July 31.
Revenue was £5.6m, compared with nil the previous year, and pre-tax losses narrowed from £9.579m to £5.907m.
R&D expenses increased by 20% to £8.3m (2020: £6.9m), reflecting focused investment in key drug discovery programmes
Net assets were £19.3m (2020: £8.1m), following a successful £15m fundraise with a total of 107,142,858 placing shares and 99,169,286 warrants issued to new and existing shareholders.
Net cash, as at, July 31, 2021, was £17.1m, compared with £5.6m at the same point a year ago.
During the year the company concluded an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with Sanofi for its IL-17A oral inhibitor programme worth up to €414m including €7m up front and €407m in potential development, regulatory and commercialisation milestones, of which €11m is in pre-clinical milestones.
A collaboration with a GEN-COVID Consortium to investigate the role genetics plays in the susceptibility, severity and prognosis between different individuals with COVID-19 has been completed.
At board level the company completed the appointment of Simon Harford and Dr Mario Polywka as non-executive directors and the resignation of Craig Fox as chief scientific officer and Dr Harry Finch as non-executive director.
Chief executive, Dr Clive Dix, said: “2021 has been a tremendous year of progress for C4XD across our entire portfolio, culminating in the signing of our second major licensing deal with a global pharma company.
“The €414m agreement with Sanofi for our IL-17A oral inhibitor programme further demonstrates the value of our drug discovery expertise and business model of driving shareholder value through early stage revenue generating deals. There is also significant partnering interest in NRF2.
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank Craig Fox and Harry Finch for their hard work and commitment throughout their tenure with us, and I welcome two new board members, Simon Harford and Dr Mario Polywka to the company.
“As we approach 2022, the successful £15m financing in autumn 2020, along with a roadmap of potential cash milestones over the next 24 months, allows us to advance and broaden our portfolio as we look to build long term value for shareholders.”
::
John Rigby, chief executive of K3 Capital
Bolton-based professional services specialist K3 Capital Group said its first six months of trading, to November 30, in fiscal year 2022 have been strong, in an update announcement this morning.
It expects to report revenues in excess of £30m (H1 FY21: £17.6m) delivering adjusted EBITDA of circa £9m (H1FY21: £5.6m).
H1FY21 revenue will be restated as £17.6m, based on the new accounting policies adopted as announced on October 15, 2021.
K3 said all business divisions have continued to perform well, driven by both organic growth in existing brands as well as the contribution of the recent acquisitions of Knight Corporate Finance Group and Knight R&D, which completed in July 2021.
Performance is in line with management’s expectations and represents circa 50% of market consensus revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the year ended 31 May 2022.
The group maintains strong pipelines across its brands for the second half of the year and management is confident in meeting the market expectations for the full year.
John Rigby, K3’s CEO, said: “The first six months of the year has been incredibly positive, with trading in line with market expectations as we continue to deliver our growth strategy across the group. The results are underpinned by diversified revenue streams and continue to illustrate the benefits of our strategy of building a broader professional services group with greater visibility of future revenues.
“We have been encouraged by the KPI performance and strong pipelines of each of the group’s divisions during the financial year so far. The board continues to look for complementary acquisitions within the professional services space and is confident in the prospects of the group for the remainder of FY22 and beyond.”
::
John Langlands
Byotrol, the Daresbury-based hygiene group, has announced the appointment of Chris Sedwell as CFO. Chris joins the board of directors with immediate effect.
Nic Hellyer, part-time CFO since May 2019, has now formally left the company, but will continue to be available to assist in an orderly handover process.
Chris is ACA trained and an ICAEW fellow. He was most recently portfolio finance director of FD and CFO Centre, working with various SMEs to provide finance consultancy.
For the preceding six years he was finance director of ConvaTec, the FTSE250 listed Deeside medical products business. Prior to this, he was head of finance and administration at Iceland International, a part of the Deeside-based UK supermarket chain Iceland Foods Group.
Byotrol chairman, John Langlands, said: “We are very pleased to welcome Chris Sedwell to the board of Byotrol. He has a wealth of highly relevant industrial and healthcare experience, from listed company to SME. We are convinced that he will be a very important asset to the company as we continue to grow and develop.”
He added: “We thank Nic Hellyer for his service to the company and wish him every success for the future.”
